My "Favorite" Road Trip

Alright ladies and gents, its random story time. This one just happens to be about tires. I know your first reaction might be to yawn, but this story comes with an important lesson. You see, I know that its sometimes easy to glance over the importance of tires... much of the time they are super reliable and easily forgotten (except those few seconds it takes to check tire pressure). Or if a sort of tire disaster happens....

One of my favorite road trip experiences happened when I was just a wee child of no more than 10 years old. My mother was driving me and my brother up from California to Seattle during one of our yearly Seattle road trips, and out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere- flat tire. In this particular section of the 5 freeway houses, people. and anything other than trees were very sparse. This was also a time when not everyone owned a cell phone (we didn't) and when certain moms (i.e. mine) didn't know how to change flats. I think from the very instance I saw the flat tire the waterworks began. My first thought was that we were very certainly doomed as we had no access to a phone and no way of getting help except from a very random stranger.

A short way down the road we were lucky enough to actually find a house... but it "NO TRESSPASSING" all across the front gate. My mom jumped the fence anyway. However, her knock at the door went unanswered and we crawled back out to the road and signalled for help. A motorist finally stopped by and changed our tire for us (whew). Other than the fear of driving with no spare tire until we reached the next major city, the relief of just being alive was good enough for me.

You might be wondering why this traumatic experience would be my favorite. Well, it was the first major lesson I had in safety. Even things that might seem relatively minor in retrospect, well, they often aren't. Tires being no exception. So I definitely urge all my readers out there to make sure your tires are up to par, watch them for wear, know how to change them should they get flat and be aware of other driving related skills that may some day come in handy.

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Discount Tire blogging program, making me eligible to receive a $50 gift card and be entered for a chance to win a prize valued at $1,000. For more information on how you can participate, click here.